Undergraduate

Cultural Artifact and Document Imaging

Student Stories

Carrie Houston, a third-year undergraduate, is enjoying exploring all of the opportunities afforded to her at the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at RIT.

Feb. 18, 2011

Rachel Pelz

An honors student with a minor in Math, Carrie is currently doing research with Roger Easton, a faculty member at the Center. "There's a lot of history involved with our project," she says. "We're doing image processing on pages of a journal of David Livingstone's, trying to recover the handwritten text so scholars can read it."

Carrie also recently completed a five-week study abroad program in Australia and New Zealand. "It was field studies," she says about her time there, "we went camping and kayaking and climbing mountains. It was a really interesting and amazing experience."

As a high school student looking for undergraduate programs, Carrie's photography teacher recommended the Photo Tech program at RIT. "I always liked the technological side of photography," says Carrie, "so I started to look [at RIT's programs] and I found Imaging Science." As she was researching, she discovered that her uncle received his Master's from CIS and he encouraged her to apply. She was excited to find a program that "has so many kinds of sciences involved, so many disciplines. I liked chemistry, biology, math. I knew I would get a good background."

During the application process, Carrie came to visit CIS at an open house they held for prospective students. "I got one-on-one attention from everyone here," remembers Carrie. "One of the students came and talked to me and Maria Helguera brought me to her lab. I didn't get that experience at any other school I visited." She says she eventually chose CIS because of "the uniqueness of the program, the individualized attention, and seeing how close everyone is."

And why is she glad she chose the Imaging Science program at RIT?

"You can't get this program anywhere else," she says. "Not even close!"